Sermorelin Peptide
The shortest piece of GHRH that still works properly, residues 1 through 29. The other fifteen turned out to be packaging, which somebody had to actually go and prove.
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For research use only. Not for human or veterinary use.
What Sermorelin Peptide is
The plain-language version, first.
Forty-four residues in the natural hormone. Twenty-nine that matter.
Sermorelin is the 1-29 fragment of growth hormone releasing hormone with a C-terminal amide, sequence YADAIFTNSYRKVLGQLSARKLLQDIMSR-NH2, molecular formula C149H246N44O42S, average mass 3,357.9, CAS 86168-78-7. It is an unmodified fragment rather than an analogue, acts at the GHRH receptor, a class B secretin-family GPCR, and is cleaved rapidly by dipeptidyl peptidase-4 at the Ala2 to Asp3 bond. Approved by the FDA in 1990 and again in 1997 as Geref, it was withdrawn in 2009 for commercial reasons.
There's an old engineering habit where you remove parts from a machine until it breaks, and the last part you removed was apparently load-bearing.
Somebody did that to a hormone.
GHRH is forty-four residues. Sermorelin is the first twenty-nine, and it turns out that is the whole working end.
The other fifteen residues do roughly nothing at the receptor. Nature is not efficient, it is just first.
So what you have here is the minimum viable GHRH, the shortest fragment that still does the parent hormone's job properly.
A molecule defined by everything it proved it did not need.
What sermorelin peptide does at the GHRH receptor
Mechanism studied, not outcome promised.
GHRH-receptor agonists amplify the pulse the pituitary already makes. Working somatotrophs are required, and somatostatin can still override the whole thing.
Native GHRH gets cut at Ala2 to Asp3 within minutes. Sermorelin inherits that unchanged. Every long-acting relative in this family exists to defend that one bond.
No cortisol signal, no prolactin signal, no appetite effect. Those belong to GHRP-2, GHRP-6, hexarelin and MK-677, which work on a different receptor entirely.
Somebody kept trimming until it stopped working, then went back one step.
Same deal as the parent hormone, because that is the entire point of a faithful fragment.
It binds the GHRH receptor on the pituitary and asks for growth hormone release. Asks, not orders.
The pituitary still decides. The feedback loops stay wired in. That is what upstream signalling means.
This is the distinction between nudging a system and overriding it, and it is why this family of compounds gets discussed differently from synthetic GH itself.
And like its parent, it is fragile. DPP-4 cuts it apart in minutes, which is the trade you make for keeping the natural sequence.
Here's the honest part. A short half-life is not a flaw somebody forgot to fix.
The natural signal is a pulse, not a drip. A molecule that clears fast mimics the pulse. Whether that matters for any given research question is exactly the kind of thing the research is for.
The research so far for Sermorelin Peptide
Where the evidence is thin, we say so.
Two former FDA approvals with the paperwork to read. A 110-child multicentre study from 1996 with a clear height-velocity result. A well-characterised receptor and a clean mechanism with no off-target endocrine signal.
Any modern randomised trial in adults for body composition, recovery or performance. Any currently marketed sermorelin product anywhere. Any Health Canada authorisation. One elderly trial reached five participants before stopping.
Most of the growth hormone catalogue is a tangle of receptors and knock-on effects. Sermorelin is the exception, and that is what makes it worth thinking about carefully. It works on the GHRH receptor, a class B secretin-family GPCR, and on nothing else. No GHS-R1a activity, which is why there is no documented cortisol signal, no prolactin signal and no appetite effect the way there is with the ghrelin receptor compounds. It amplifies a pulse the pituitary was already going to make rather than creating a new one, so it still needs working somatotrophs and somatostatin can still shut the whole thing down. That narrows the interesting questions down to three. What the receptor actually does. What riding an existing pulse means compared with overriding it. And why a molecule the FDA approved twice, seven years apart, first as a diagnostic and then as a paediatric treatment, is not on a shelf anywhere today, having left in 2009 for commercial reasons rather than because anything went wrong with it.
Two real approvals in its past, both surrendered, neither for the reason forums think.
This one has a genuinely strange regulatory arc and it is worth telling straight.
FDA approved it in the nineties, first as a diagnostic, then in September 1997 for a paediatric indication.
Real approvals. Full programme. And then the product left the market in 2008 anyway.
It left for commercial and manufacturing reasons, not because a safety problem surfaced or an approval was pulled for cause. Drugs exit for boring reasons more often than anybody assumes.
What does not exist: a modern randomised trial in adults for the purposes people actually search this compound for.
An honest past as a medicine, a commercial death unrelated to the science, and a present-day reputation built on questions the trials never asked.
GHRH 1-29, unmodified. Canadian stock, ships from BC.
Sermorelin Peptide specs
The chemistry, exactly as released.
Who studies Sermorelin Peptide
Who tends to order this one, and why.
A research compound does not have one audience. It has a handful of rooms where the same question keeps coming up, and the question is a different question in each of them.
GHRH receptor pharmacology
The least modified GHRH agonist available, which makes it the natural reference point when you want to see what the receptor does without a half-life extension confounding it.
Pulsatility research
Because it amplifies rather than overrides, it is the compound of choice for studying how the endogenous GH pulse behaves under stimulation.
Regulatory history
One of very few compounds here with a complete public FDA record: two approvals, two withdrawal letters, and an explicit determination that safety was not the reason.
Comparative secretagogue work
Side by side with a GHRP it separates GHRH-receptor effects from ghrelin-receptor effects cleanly, since the two pathways are independent and synergistic.
Sold for laboratory research only. This is not guidance for personal use, and nothing here is a recommendation.
Sermorelin Peptide backstory
How it got here.
The order these molecules were discovered in is backwards from what you would guess. Cyril Bowers found the growth hormone releasing peptides in 1976.
GHRH itself, the natural hormone, was not isolated until 1982. So the synthetic imitations came first, by six years, and their discoverer spent a while assuming they had to be analogues of some natural GHRH nobody had found yet.
He was half right. They turned out to be mimicking a completely different hormone, ghrelin, which took until 1999 to isolate out of stomach tissue.
And GHRH was not pulled out of a hypothalamus. It was isolated from pancreatic tumours in patients with acromegaly, which is why you still see it called GRF, growth hormone releasing factor, in older papers.
The tumours were making so much of it that they were easier to purify from than the brain. Once they had the 44-residue sequence, somebody started truncating.
Twenty-nine residues in, it still worked. That is the molecule in this vial.
- 1
Approved twice, for two different jobs
Geref cleared FDA in December 1990 as a pituitary-function diagnostic, then again in September 1997 as a paediatric growth treatment. Same molecule, separate applications.
- 2
Withdrawn for business reasons
FDA put it in writing that both products were not withdrawn for reasons of safety or effectiveness. EMD Serono discontinued them and FDA formally withdrew approval in June 2009.
- 3
A third of GHRH is decoration
The natural hormone is 44 residues. The first 29 carry full activity. That is why the drug is a fragment and not the hormone.
Buying Sermorelin Peptide in Canada
What ships, how fast, and the paperwork.
The hard part of buying research material is almost never the compound. It is the logistics. What leaves the building, how fast it moves, and what is in the box beside the vial. Here is ours, plainly.
Not the same as CJC-1295
CJC-1295 is this backbone with four substitutions and, in the DAC version, a maleimide that locks onto albumin. Sermorelin is the plain fragment. The multi-day half-life figures in circulation belong to CJC-1295 with DAC, not to this.
No authorised product in Canada
Sermorelin returns nothing in the Health Canada drug database. The approved GHRH analogue here is tesamorelin, under DINs 02423677 and 02438712.
Keep it cold and dark
Lyophilised peptides hold best refrigerated and away from light. Handle as a laboratory reagent.
Sermorelin Peptide vs CJC-1295 no DAC
Stacked together constantly, compared almost never.
Same twenty-nine residues at heart, one generation of chemistry apart.
Sermorelin is GHRH 1-29 unmodified: the natural working fragment, with the natural fragility. DPP-4 takes it apart in minutes.
Modified GRF 1-29 is the same fragment wearing four substitutions, each blocking a cleavage point, trading fidelity for durability.
One is the natural sentence and one is the same sentence laminated. Which you want depends entirely on whether your question needs the natural clearance or resents it. CJC-1295 no DAC has its own page here
Stuff people ask about Sermorelin Peptide
If your question is not here, email us. Real human answers.
A 29-amino-acid peptide matching residues 1 to 29 of growth hormone releasing hormone, with a C-terminal amide. It is the shortest fragment of GHRH that retains full activity at the GHRH receptor, which is why it became a drug while the full 44-residue hormone did not.
Twice. FDA approved Geref in December 1990 as a diagnostic for pituitary growth hormone secretion, and again in September 1997 for idiopathic growth hormone deficiency in children with growth failure. EMD Serono discontinued both, and FDA withdrew the approvals effective June 2009. FDA stated explicitly that they were not withdrawn for reasons of safety or effectiveness.
Different receptor entirely. Sermorelin works on the GHRH receptor and amplifies the pulse your pituitary is already generating. The GHRPs and MK-677 work on GHS-R1a, the ghrelin receptor, which sits in tissues beyond the somatotroph and therefore also moves cortisol, prolactin and appetite. The two pathways are independent, which is why combining them is synergistic rather than additive.
Mostly paediatric and mostly from the 1990s. The strongest is a 1996 multicentre study of 110 prepubertal children with growth hormone deficiency, where height velocity went from 4.1 centimetres per year to 8.0 at six months. There is no modern randomised trial in adults for body composition or recovery, and one elderly trial stopped after five participants.
DPP-4 cleaves GHRH between alanine 2 and aspartate 3, and sermorelin has no protection at that bond. Native GHRH clears in minutes for the same reason. Every longer-acting relative in this family, including tesamorelin and CJC-1295, carries a modification aimed specifically at that site.
Prohibited at all times. The 2026 WADA Prohibited List names sermorelin explicitly under S2.2.4, growth hormone releasing factors, alongside CJC-1293, CJC-1295 and tesamorelin. It applies in and out of competition, and S2 substances are non-Specified.
Good pairing options with Sermorelin Peptide
What researchers stack alongside it.
Pairing is where research gets ahead of itself. These are the compounds researchers put in the same order as Sermorelin Peptide, which is a statement about ordering habits, not about evidence. Two things in one cart have not been studied together unless somebody studied them together.
Not a molecule. FSH and LH activity extracted from postmenopausal urine and standardised in international units. Still marketed in Canada in 2026, which makes it the rare extract with live approvals.
The unprocessed precursor, all 344 residues with the signal peptide still attached. The protein your body actually secretes is a different animal: 315 residues and 36 cysteines folded just so.
Order Sermorelin Peptide right now
One last look before you decide.
Freeze-dried, COA on the page, ships cold
If you are researching Sermorelin Peptide and you want a source you do not have to second-guess, start with the paperwork on this page. For research use only.
Not for human consumption. Not approved by Health Canada or any other regulatory body.
Page last updated August 19, 2026
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